The inflationary effects of elections: political business cycles in Uganda (2010 – 2024)
| dc.contributor.author | Elvis William Segawa | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T12:07:30Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T12:07:30Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2026-05-25 | |
| dc.description | Undergraduate | |
| dc.description.abstract | The study examined the inflationary effects of elections in Uganda, using 60 quarterly observations from 2010Q1 to 2024Q4, which represent three presidential elections (2011, 2016 and 2021). To account for both the long-run relationship and the causal pathway between electoral cycles, fiscal deficits, money supply growth, and inflation, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Error Correction Model (ARDL-ECM) was estimated along with Toda-Yamamoto Granger non-causality test.The ARDL Bounds Test gave a result of cointegration at 1 per cent significance level (F-statistic = 5.225). The quarterly model accounted for 96.25% of the inflation (R² = 0.962) in Uganda. An important discovery was that inflation was not only kept low during the election quarter (Q1, January–March of election years), but that it jumped substantially in the second quarter of election years (April-June), as post-election fiscal loosening was accompanied by monetary expansion. Broad money supply growth (LN_MSG) was the dominant long-run driver of inflation (coefficient = 13.554, p = 0.002). The Error Correction Term of -0.244 (p = 0.002) confirmed that 24.4% of quarterly deviations from the long-run equilibrium were corrected each quarter. The Granger causality analysis confirmed that Fiscal Deficit (FD) drove LN_MSG (χ² = 10.193, p = 0.001), LN_MSG and inflation reinforced each other bidirectionally, and inflation fed back into fiscal deficits through the Olivera-Tanzi effect. All post-estimation diagnostics confirmed model reliability.The findings confirmed that Uganda exhibited a conditional Political Business Cycle in which electoral incentives generated temporary price suppression in the election quarter followed by inflationary surges in the post-election quarter. The study recommended binding pre-election fiscal rules and pre-emptive monetary policy protocols for the Bank of Uganda. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12311/3457 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Uganda Christian University | |
| dc.subject | Political Business Cycle | |
| dc.subject | Inflation | |
| dc.subject | Electoral Cycles | |
| dc.subject | Uganda | |
| dc.subject | ARDL-ECM | |
| dc.subject | Money Supply Growth | |
| dc.subject | Fiscal Deficit | |
| dc.subject | Granger Causality | |
| dc.subject | 2010-2024. | |
| dc.title | The inflationary effects of elections: political business cycles in Uganda (2010 – 2024) | |
| dc.type | Dissertation |